now that taxes are increased, we've got to see how they're reacting to that, but up until this point, almost everything pointed to stronger consumer spending and that i take as a posive sgn. >> brown: what about just filling in a little bit more on the housing sector because those numbers came out yesterday, they look good, they were interpreted as very positive. but i note that even robert shiller himself sort of suggested that he can't read all that much into them. how important is that sector? >> well, to me i think housing is critically important, not simply because of whole construction which obviously powers an awful lot of jobs but when you consider all the people who have been underwater for so long and they have this negative wealth effect, we talked about the facthat 401(k)s are going up. if they see house prices going up they feel an awful lot better as well. so i think this strength in the housing prices are really the most important factor out there and it's spread really across the country. not quite as strong as what's going on in some of the areas that collapsed like p